1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a portable terminal and, more particularly, to a Digital Rights Management (DRM) content player that has two processor/memory pairs and to a DRM content play method for the DRM content player.
2. Description of the Related Art
DRM relates to protection and management of copyrighted digital contents. Using cryptography, DRM aims to achieve secure delivery of various contents from content providers to users, and to prevent unauthorized redistribution of contents delivered to users. DRM supports the full life cycle of digital contents including creation, distribution, usage and retirement both in on-line and off-line states.
To use a DRM-protected content (or DRM content) in a portable terminal, the user of the portable terminal connects to a DRM content server and downloads a desired DRM content, metadata on the DRM content, and a license. The metadata provides information regarding the DRM content. The license contains a decryption key for decryption of the encrypted DRM content, and states usage rights upon the DRM content (for example, the number of content replays and expiration dates). After download of the DRM content with the associated metadata and license in the portable terminal, the user can use the downloaded DRM content within the usage rights stated in the license.
For a portable terminal having one control processor and one memory unit in which DRM contents and associated licenses are stored, when the user requests to play a DRM content, the associated license can be readily found.
However, in an advanced portable terminal that has two separate control processors each controlling an assigned memory unit, a DRM content and associated license may be stored in different memory units. Hence, to play DRM content, identification of the location of the associated license is necessary. In addition, one of the two control processors may not have a COmpressor/DECompressor (CODEC) necessary to play DRM content. Hence, sharing or transfer of a CODEC between the two control processors may be necessary.
Accordingly, in an advanced portable terminal that has two processors and two memory units, development of means for environment setting, inter-processor and inter-memory communication is necessary for DRM content playing.